Wright View: Fresh West Brom funding isn’t ‘great news’, despite what Tom Ross believes
Danny Wright is a lifelong West Brom fan thanks to his dad, who grew up idolising Cyrille Regis and John Wile. Danny’s had to endure the likes of Victor Anichebe and Diego Lugano. He’s now putting his passion for the Albion into words with a regular fan view for West Brom News…
I wrote on Sunday that West Brom’s current stunning form in the Championship shouldn’t let fans lose sight of the fact that the club is still in a perilous financial position.
It only took them just over 24 hours before unfortunately proving me right.
Albion announced on Monday (27 November) that additional funding has been secured from MSD Holdings to add to the £20million loan that was taken out last year.
Based on the wording of West Brom’s official statement, the loan has been secured to essentially tide the club over while the ongoing takeover is thrashed out.
The Express & Star reports that while the sum of this new loan hasn’t been disclosed by West Brom (we probably won’t know for sure until the next set of accounts emerges), it’s not as big as the previous £20million loan that was taken out from MSD Holdings and secured against club assets such as The Hawthorns.
And therein lies the issue.
Local broadcaster Tom Ross dubbed Monday’s update as “great news” but it’s anything but that.
It’s not disastrous news but it’s definitely nowhere near “great”.
The silver lining, of course, is that West Brom are taking steps to ensure that new owners are going to be arriving at The Hawthorns and while that process is done, the club will be kept afloat.
However, I’ve found myself wondering what will happen if the takeover collapses.
Whoever these potential new owners are, they’re probably not thrilled by the prospect of having to pay off more debt when they complete a deal for the Albion. And we doubt very much that Guochuan Lai and co have been easy to deal with until this point.
If that takeover collapses and West Brom aren’t able to pay off the before-than-before loan to MSD Holdings, the club’s home is at risk, as are all other club assets.
You can bet that the playing squad will be decimated, Carlos Corberan will be effectively sold off and any dreams of returning to the Premier League any time soon will be completely quashed.
That update on Monday raises the risk factor at The Hawthorns and that certainly isn’t great.
In other West Brom news, here are our player ratings for the win over Ipswich, with one player scoring 9/10.